Helmet Dunk of the Week: Poythress or Cauley-Stein?

Video and poll at the bottom

Did Willie Cauley-Stein do enough to overcome the dunk Alex Poythress threw down on him at the Blue-White Scrimmage?

The Kentucky basketball team has a tradition of crowning a player with a helmet – a blue Kentucky football helmet, mind you – if he gets dunked on or “posterized” in practice. Assistant coach John Robic started the tradition.

When practice is over, the player that throws down the dunk gets the honor of putting the helmet on the victim. The player that is posterized has to keep the helmet in their locker until the next “Helmet Dunk” occurs. There is also a section of a hallway between the video room and Joe Craft Center practice court that has a picture of the dunker with the helmet and a picture of the guy who was dunked on with the helmet on.

The whole idea of the Helmet Dunk Award is to breed competition, but it also lightens the mood and builds a little team camaraderie during the daily grind of practice.

We’ve decided to make the Helmet Dunk award interactive again and bring it back to CoachCal.com until regular-season games start. For the next few Sundays or Mondays, we’ll post the videos of the Helmet Dunks from the previous week and let you, the fans, vote on who you thought had the best dunk.

This week’s nominees feature Poythress and Cauley-Stein. Poythress threw down the dunk of the Blue-White Scrimmage when he got a baseline feed and went up and over Cauley-Stein as he tried to take a charge. Cauley-Stein tried to outdo Poythress on Sunday in practice with an impressive alley-oop slam over Nerlens Noel.